It’s been a rainy stretch of weather across eastern Iowa in the past week. With more heavy rain on the way, there is a threat for flash flooding across much of the area. The map below shows how much rain the ground can handle within a 3 hour period before flash flooding occurs. Much of the area can only handle an inch and a half to 2 inches.

Here is how much rain the WPC is forecasting for the area. This is through tonight, and the bullseye of just over 3 1/2 inches across eastern Iowa. Keep in mind, thunderstorms with heavier rain could drop heavier amounts within a short period of time.

With the heavy rain potential, a Flash Flood Watch goes into effect at 4 PM Wednesday, and lasts through Thursday morning for much of the KWWL viewing area.

Here’s a check of Storm Track 7 Live Doppler Radar (~2PM). It’s showing some strong thunderstorms with heavy rain tracking east through the area.

Right now, these storms are below severe limits. Later this afternoon and evening that we need to keep an eye out for severe weather as a warm front tracks through the area. We’ll keep an eye on it and break in on KWWL if need be.

Light rain will taper off this evening. Not much rain accumulation today. Most locations just about everyone less than 0.25″ of rain. Here is the visible satellite from this afternoon.

Here is the reason why we didn’t have much rain and it took a while for everyone to see some rain. The morning sounding, showed the atmosphere was pretty dry. We had to overcome that before it started to rain.

A sounding tells us many things about the atmosphere. This portion of it shows the temperature (red line) and dewpoint (green line). When they are close the atmosphere is saturated and when they are apart it is dry.

A nice spring day ahead tomorrow. Warmer temperatures and some sunshine will end our week. There is a very small chance of stray storm south of Cedar Rapids in the afternoon. Isolated showers are possible across all of eastern Iowa Friday night.

We are tracking another low pressure system forecast to move through the middle of the country this weekend. Some severe weather is possible with this storm.

Here is the position of the low and front Saturday and Sunday morning.

Ahead of the cold front there is a risk of severe weather. Timing and where the storms will fire up will be dealt with 12 to 24 hours before.

The outlook areas will adjust as needed once the storm pulls out into the middle of the country. The storms will be scattered and there might be some locations that remain dry this entire weekend.

A Frost Advisory is in effect tonight for areas NW of a line from Waterloo to Decorah. Temperatures in this region will be around 33 or 34 degrees. Where there is no advisory, it is still going to be cold with temperatures more in the upper 30s.

It has been another very humid day with dewpoints in the mid 70s. There is some relief on the way tomorrow. A cold front is pushing through northwest Iowa this afternoon. Here is the position of the cold front at 2 PM.

As the front crosses eastern Iowa this evening there will be a slight chance of storms. If a storm does develop, there is a chance it could be severe since the atmosphere is unstable enough for severe weather to develop. The Storm Prediction Center shows a slight risk of severe weather this evening for much of eastern Iowa.

Again keep in mind that IF storms do develop they may become severe. We will continue to track the front as it crosses the area this evening.

High pressure will move across the Midwest and provide us with dry weather through the rest of the week as well as relatively lower humidity levels. The dry weather is forecast to continue through early next week as a weak front will have little to no moisture to work with in generating showers/storms.